


To Speke of Phisik and of Surgerye

by sakuuya



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: Crack with a pretentious title, Crack... ish?, Gen, Genuinely don't know where this falls on the crack spectrum, some light murder, the magnus archives au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuuya/pseuds/sakuuya
Summary: That feeling when you're really looking forward to a new book but then it turns out to suck.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	To Speke of Phisik and of Surgerye

Dr. Jhandir slipped the blackjack back into his trouser pocket and stepped over the body on the floor, careful not to get blood on his shoes. The poor fool hadn’t even known what a treasure he owned. Dr. Jhandir didn’t need to turn on the light in the dead man’s library to find what he was looking for. Not when he was so close. He could _feel_ it calling to him. Every heartbeat felt momentous as he walked over to a corner shelf, the wood of which was stained darker than the rest of the library. _Dried blood._ Dr. Jhandir smiled. He’d come to the right place.

The blank spine was creased like a much-read paperback. It was nearly as absurd that such an important, powerful book would be bound like some common thriller as it was that, after months of searching, Dr. Jhandir had tracked it down to Hounslow, only a few miles from his own home. He shuddered as he pulled it from the shelf, feeling the power in the unremarkable-looking b-format softback. The cover was nearly as simple as the spine, just the title on a plain black field. _The Boneturner’s Tale_. A book that, if the stories were to be believed, could give the reader the ability to reshape flesh and bone to his whim. Dr. Jhandir fancied that it was warmer than it should have been, somehow more alive than the other books on the shelf.

On his way out, he grabbed a few valuable-looking items at random. Not that he needed them, as he’d already claimed his prize, but it was best if this looked like a common robbery. He walked half a mile out of his way to dump the unwanted loot in a hedge. As he was fishing out a silver receiving tray, his fingers brushed against _The Boneturner’s Tale_ and another jolt of fear and excitement ran through him. There was no one about at this hour, and while he couldn’t very well read the whole thing standing in a hedge in Brentford, neither could he wait any longer to take a peek inside.

It was horrible, and not in an eldritch way.

Dr. Jhandir had read _The Canterbury Tales_ in university, so he thought he’d known what to expect, but it turned out that _The Boneturner’s Tale_ was nothing like its inspiration. It was written in modern English, and reading it was an excellent reminder of why he avoided reading English popular fiction.

He snapped the book shut. There was still something electric about holding it, but he wasn’t sure that made up for the abysmal prose. For a moment, Dr. Jhandir seriously considered leaving it in the hedge too, but he’d killed a man for it, after all. The least he could do was make more of an effort to actually read the thing. So, once he got home, he did just that. He poured himself a brandy, settled in his study, and vowed to read as much of it as he could in order to unlock its secrets.

He made it sixteen pages before he had to stop and resist the urge to throw the stupid thing across the room. It was describing the Boneturner practically pulling Chauncer’s Miller inside out. Now, Dr. Jhandir wasn’t a man easily affected by gore. Quite the contrary—he was a surgeon, after all, and he practiced more… experimental techniques in his off time. But _The Boneturner’s Tale_ turned his stomach.

How could it make disassembling a living man’s ribcage seem so insipid? Why couldn’t the writer find a single poetic thing to say about the way it felt to have bone splinter under your fingers? Dr. Jhandir was no particular fan of Chaucer, but at least Chaucer managed to stumble into an interesting description sometimes. _The Boneturner’s Tale_ , by contrast, was the stupidest thing Dr. Jhandir had ever read.

He kept grinding away at it for a week, but eventually he decided that there was no way he’d ever be able to finish the idiotic thing. Mastery over flesh itself be damned, he couldn’t force himself to read another word of that drivel. He threw _The Boneturner’s Tale_ into a dissection pan to stop it from ruining his other books.

To cleanse his brain, he sat back down with his copy of _An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine_. After a few minutes of reading, though, Bernard’s comfortingly clinical writing morphed into a mockery of language that was by now much too familiar. Somehow, _The Boneturner’s Tale_ had overwritten Bernard’s discourse. Dr. Jhandir gave a cry of fear and frustration and heaved the book across the room, where it overturned a potted plant.

Once he’d made sure the plant was all right and swept up the spilled soil, Dr. Jhandir tried reading another book, a reference on the anatomy of organs, Just as before, the text metamorphosed into _The Boneturner’s Tale_ before his eyes.

The next day, it was happening everywhere he looked. Books, websites, and even shop signs—if it had writing on it, that writing was from _The Boneturner’s Tale_ , and every word of it was rubbish. Dr. Jhandir spent the rest of the day pointedly not reading anything, gardening instead. When he woke the next morning, though, he could feel panic starting to claw at his chest. He couldn’t just _never read again_ for the rest of his life! One way or another, he was going to have to finish _The Boneturner’s Tale_.

It took him more than a fortnight, during which time he did very little with his waking hours except force himself to read that stupid book in whatever format it presented itself; go for walks when he couldn’t stand it any more; and curse the book, himself for trying to read it, and the dead imbecile he’d taken it from. He cancelled all of his surgeries because he couldn’t risk getting distracted at a crucial moment, and all of his social engagements because he couldn’t bear the thought of making small talk with the weight of the unfinished book bearing down on him.

Dr. Jhandir only realized that it was finally over when text stopped changing—like _The Canterbury Tales_ itself, there was no satisfying resolution to what could laughably be called _The Boneturner’s Tale_ ’s story. He was on edge for hours afterward, in case this was some new trick the book was playing on him. Finally, though, he thought to fish it out of its dissection pan and confirmed that yes, he’d read every word.

He ran a hand over his opposite forearm, and the flesh rippled obligingly at his touch. Well. At least _some_ good had come of this.


End file.
